He sighed. “Then you are sad, Lilith?”
“No. I am never sad. There is light within my solitude, and the glory of God’s beauty everywhere.”
El-Râmi gazed down upon her, an expression very like despair shadowing his own features.
“Too far, too far she wends her flight;”—he muttered to himself wearily. “How can I argue on these vague and sublimated utterances! I cannot understand her joy—she cannot understand my pain. Evidently Heaven’s language is incomprehensible to mortal ears. And yet;—Lilith!” he called again almost imperiously. “You talk of God as if you knew Him. But I—I know Him not—I have not proved Him; tell me of His Shape, His Seeming,—if indeed you have the power.”
She was silent. He studied her tranquil face intently,—the smile upon it was in very truth divine.
“No answer!” he said with some derision. “Of course,—what answer should there be! What Shape or Seeming should there be to a mere huge blind Force that creates without reason, and destroys without necessity!”
As he thus soliloquised, Lilith stirred, and flung her white arms upward as though in ecstasy, letting them fall slowly afterwards in a folded position behind her head.
“To the seven declared tones of Music, add seventy million more,”—she said—“and let them ring their sweetest cadence, they shall make but a feeble echo of the music of God’s voice! To all the shades of radiant colour, to all the lines of noblest form, add the splendour of eternal youth, eternal goodness, eternal joy, eternal power, and yet we shall not render into speech or song the beauty of our God! From His glance flows Light—from His presence rushes Harmony,—as He moves through Space great worlds are born; and at His bidding planets grow within the air like flowers. Oh to see Him passing ’mid the stars!——”
She broke off suddenly and drew a long deep breath, as of sheer delight,—but the shadow on El-Râmi’s features darkened wearily.
“You teach me nothing, Lilith”—he said sadly and somewhat sternly—“You speak of what you see—or what you think you see—but you cannot convince me of its truth.”